Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put…

Areopagitica is a pamphlet in the form of a speech to Parliament, which in 1643 had made a licence compulsory for every book. Milton has just praised Lord Brooke, killed in the civil war, whose book on episcopacy asked that those who “desire to live purely” be heard with patience. Now is the time to write and speak freely, he says; even if “all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth”, so long as Truth is in the field, we injure her by licensing and prohibiting. The line follows, with its corollary: “Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.”

Milton published the pamphlet in November 1644, without a licence, under a title taken from the Areopagus of Athens. The plea was ignored; licensing of the press in England lasted until 1695.

The line is now one of the founding statements of the freedom of the press, though Milton refused it to Catholics. Its trust in a “free and open encounter” underlies the modern marketplace of ideas.

Areopagitica, 1644

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work